Sun at Midnight - Softcover

Thomas, Rosie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 000720373X ISBN 13: 9780007203734

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2005

Synopsis

An epic love story and adventure set against the harsh, beautiful background of Antarctica.

Alice is a scientist: she relies on method, precision, proof. But when her relationship with Oxford artist Peter Brown collapses spectacularly, she is forced to evaluate her own life for the first time. In her thirties, childless, tied to Oxford by her work, it is time to break away. Alice's mother, Margaret Mather, is famous as an adventuring anthropologist, one of the first women in Antarctica many years before. Alice accepts an invitation to go in Margaret's place to the southernmost point of the earth, and stay there for months, away from the world that has let her down. Little does she expect the strangeness of a place coloured blue and white, lit by an unearthly permanent sunlight. And nothing has prepared her for the close confines of a small base shared with eight men and one other woman. A base where tensions run high, where the hostile environment traps them, and where the distance means no-one has a past. Where she feels such a strong attraction to a man with danger in his face that she cannot speak to him. And where she discovers something else that will change her life forever ... if she survives.

About this title

Review:

‘This is an epic love story set against breathtaking descriptions of Antarctic waste.’ Woman and Home

Praise for Rosie Thomas:

‘Rosie Thomas writes with beautiful, effortless prose, and shows a rare compassion and a real understanding of the nature of love.’ The Times

‘Honest and absorbing, Rosie Thomas mixes the bitter and the hopeful with the knowledge that the human heart is far more complicated than any rule suggests.’ Mail on Sunday

‘A master storyteller.’ Cosmopolitan

‘A story full of passion... will keep you reading long after bedtime.’ New Woman

‘Thomas’s novels are beautifully written. This one is a treat.’ Marie Claire

From the Author:

It is always intriguing to catch a glimpse of another world. I love novels that give me a picture of a place I have never visited, a slice of history or an insight into a different culture – the more exotic the better. For me, it’s a very strong element of the delight that utter immersion in a book can bring.
It works the other way round, too. When I travel it’s always with an eye open for a possible setting, an unfamiliar world I can recreate in fiction, and when I discover one there’s always a distinct shiver of recognition. This is what happened when I first saw Antarctica.
It is so beautiful, with an unearthly and forbidding loveliness to which no photograph or film can do justice. It is the harshest place on earth, and the most seductive to the imagination. Almost my first thought was that I wanted to set a novel there. The memory of the heroic narratives of Mawson, Scott and Shackleton was utterly daunting, but - maybe if I wrote a love story? Antarctica would be much more than just a setting. It would be both the place and the passion that drew my lovers together, forged their bond, and then threatened to destroy them.
My practical problem was how to get back there, not as a tourist but to live and work on the ice, however briefly. It is a difficult place to visit. You can’t just turn up and hope for the best.
In the end, I struck lucky. I was invited to spend a month in a tiny research station, alongside a dozen geologists and biologists. Even though they had satellite communications, hot showers, motorised skidoos, they were still pecariously perched on a promontory between the giant glaciers and the icebergs sailing in the bay. They were not so far removed from the old polar heroes.
I followed the scientists, who became my friends. I watched the ice and the mercurial weather, dreamed and worked and wrote, and out of that experience came Sun at Midnight.
I was in love when I wrote it, with a place and a time.
I hope you will enjoy my lovers’ passion and their adventure – and that the book will also give you that precious glimpse of another world.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 000720373X
• ISBN 13: 9780007203734
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400